According to English-language technology media VentureBeat, the independent studio Thatgamecompany, founded by the famous Chinese designer Chen Xinghan and has developed games such as "Wind Journey Man" and "Light Encounter", recently announced that it has completed a round of financing of $160 million, invested by TPG and Sequoia Capital. Following this round of funding, Pixar Animation Studios co-founder Ed Kamel will become Chief Advisor on creative culture and strategic development for Thatgamecompany.
As the co-founder and CEO of Thatgamecompany, Chen Xinghan said the company aims to continue to advance its mission to "promote people-to-people connections through games." Thatgamecompany will continue to support the player community and create new games while upholding its independent values.
"Frankly, it took me a long time to really adapt... Earlier last year, we had less than 40 people in the entire company, but now we have close to 100 members. My daily life has also changed dramatically. Light Encounter has been growing healthily, both to support the company's growth and to help us attract investors. ”
According to Chen Xinghan, Thatgamecompany has always adhered to the original direction of product development, that is, to create emotional games for players around the world.
"We want to increase public acceptance of games as an art form." Chen Xinghan said, "We wanted to create a game that could appeal to people of all ages, with a variety of identities and backgrounds, emotionally through a single experience. Animated films have experienced some milestones in their development, such as the release of Snow White and Toy Story, and in the field of games, we will continue to work towards similar moments. I am confident that Ed Kammel's advice, along with the financial support of TPG and Sequoia Capital, will be of great help to us. ”
Since the studio's inception in 2006, Thatgamecompany has developed a series of highly artistic games, including a remake of Flow PS3, Flower, Wind Traveler, and Light Encounter, which landed on the PlayStation platform. These games have gained good reputation, but Chen Xinghan admitted that due to the long development cycle of "Wind Traveler", the company was once in financial difficulties after the release of the game, losing many core members.
Fortunately, Chen Xinghan met Benchmark venture capitalist Mitch Lasky during that time and raised the funds needed for the company's continued development through the other party. After ending its partnership with Sony, Thatgamecompany wanted to reach a wider player base with its games, and in 2019 launched the social experience-focused multiplayer adventure mobile game Light Encounter.
"When Light Meet first came out, we didn't know if it would survive. Fortunately, people spread word of mouth and recommend it to friends... Without everyone's support, we wouldn't have been able to scale up our team and wouldn't have been able to enrich the gaming experience. ”
Chen Xinghan revealed that the company's revenue is quite impressive, but it also needs additional funds to expand its infrastructure and technology, and may even launch acquisitions in the future. "Users are growing much faster than companies. Around the world, we need to meet the needs of different player groups. Meanwhile, we're busy making our next game, which feels more like a theme park. ”
"We wanted to make content that would resonate emotionally with a wider audience." Chen Xinghan added, "We wanted to build a game like a Disney or Pixar animated movie: husbands can play with their wives, parents can play with their children... The PlayStation doesn't seem to reach such a wide range of people, after all, not everyone owns a PlayStation console. So we chose the mobile platform. ”
According to Chen Xinghan, when the development of "Light Encounter" entered its third year, the company decided to restart the entire project and adjust the game's business model: from paid downloads to F2P. While this meant that the development team had to take on the extra workload, it turned out to be the right decision. Chen Xinghan also said that "Light Encounter" has almost no violent elements, which makes it attractive to a wider range of people - of all the active players of "Light Encounter", women make up nearly 70%.
In addition, the development team can continue to add new content to Light Encounter. Chen Xinghan believes that if the experience of most console games is compared to "riding a roller coaster", then the experience brought by "Light and Encounter" to players is more like a "theme park".
"I don't think the gaming industry has that experience like Disneyland or a Pixar movie to this day." Chen Xinghan said, "My wife and I have never played from the beginning to the level of any game together... How can we provide that experience to our players? This is my wish. "Light Encounter" is an attempt, but we hope to do better. We hope that in the future, Light Encounter and the company's new games will be part of a theme park, as if they existed in some interconnected metaverse. ”
It is worth mentioning that the social mobile game "Light Encounter", which was first used as a healing system, was not optimistic about everyone in the initial business model, but this game surprised many people in the follow-up, in addition to having beautiful revenue, the game also maintains a good reputation, and the game's communication model is also different from the traditional buying model, more from a kind of word-of-mouth marketing. In the linkage with the little prince last year, "Light Encounter" once again out of the circle, according to the official questionnaire, linkage has become the main marketing method of "Light Encounter", and in the choice of IP, "Light Encounter" is still inclined to be more compatible with its own attributes of the IP. Next, the second linkage plan with China will be launched soon.